Investigating Appehinglaus.com: Legit Store or Shady Scam?

Appehinglaus.com is a deceptive website that offers to purchase items at unusually discounted prices. It may appear as a discounter, or as a marketplace for warehouse liquidation items, but it is in fact just a ploy to make you think about this site as a legitimate one. After placing an order on this site, you will most likely get nothing at all, or, at best, poor-quality or counterfeit items.

In this article, I will demonstrate the concerning indicators regarding the Appehinglaus.com store, the way this fraud operates, and teach how to detect similar scams. This will help you to avoid similar shopping frauds in upcoming times.

Appehinglaus.com Site – Scam Overview

As I said, Appehinglaus.com may initially appear like a legit discounter or the seller of stock liquidation items. But a brief analysis shows a troubling amount of red flags that indicate clearly about this site’s deception. Questionable advertising methods, unreasonably low prices, lack of user support and customer reviews – this site completes the scam bingo right away.

Appehinglaus.com Scam

By purchasing on websites like Appehinglaus.com, it is uncertain that you will obtain the goods you’ve ordered. More frequently, it results in one of 3 cases standard for scam sites.

Counterfeit goods. Not the worst option, as you get at least something. But as it usually happens to fake items of popular brands, the quality will be inferior, to say the least. Eventually, the site may indicate about that somewhere deep in the item description or “about us” page, but users rarely check them thoroughly. This is a specifically frequent case when ordering from sites that sell baubles, small electronics and stuff the like.

Wrong item. To make the transaction look real, but spend even less money on the delivered item, frauds may ship a accidental item they have on hand instead of your order. An old t-shirt instead of a branded one, a dirty aluminum dish instead of a set of dishes – scammers may turn quite inventive in that case.

Nothing at all. This is the most common case when ordering from pages like Appehinglaus.com. Scams take your money, promise the delivery, and then merely disappear. As scam websites do not aim to exist for a long time, scams do not bother themselves with creating even a vague semblance of legitimacy.

Appehinglaus.com scam – How does it work?

As any scam, Appehinglaus.com runs a simple and well-proven scheme of operations. It usually consists of 3 stages, with certain deviations from time to time.

Step 1 – Attract the Masses. Frauds post massive amounts of advertisements on social media, particularly preferring Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Paid ads say the same things as their sites do: 90% discounts, free delivery around the world, hurry up to get the deal.

Ads of fraudulent shops posted on different platforms

As users regard ads on the mentioned platforms legitimate, they do not suspect anything at this point. Ads become particularly compelling during major events that boost people’s interest in shopping, like Halloween, Black Friday, Christmas, etc. Sometimes, they disguise themselves as resellers of the liquidated stock of bankrupt retail companies.

Step 2 – Take the Money. Once users are on the website, tricksters do their best to make the individuals buy something. Impossibly good deals, additional discounts, free shipping, bright and blinking “Order Now” buttons that are just everywhere – they use every single method possible. And this works out – uninformed individuals stick to the offers and proceed to paying for the order.

Payments are done in a peculiar manner. Instead of more classic options for online shopping, like Visa/MasterCard payments or PayPal, swindlers offer using direct bank transfers, Venmo or CashApp. Thing is, the latter do not provide any refunds, regardless of the circumstances. Even when you can prove that the transaction went to swindlers, “no refunds” is a part of their policy which you agree on upon registration.

Step 3 – Vanish. Once crooks get enough money, or – what is more likely – there are enough complaints and user feedback about the site being a scam, they just disappear. Usually, this happens at around the 2nd or 3rd week of the site activity. Once enough individuals know about the dishonest activity, the profits will dry up, leaving cheats with no reason to move on. Reporting the scam to the hosting speeds up the domain takedown.

Why is Appehinglaus.com a Scam?

Well, we just talked about the way the scam site operates. Now, let’s see how to understand whether the site is deceptive without risking your money. Fortunately, rascals do not bother themselves with creating well-rounded disguises, so the same red flags repeat from one site to another.

1. Fake or absent reviews

Hoax websites aim to exist for 1-2 weeks, so there’s no purpose (and way) to make any online reputation with user reviews. Obviously, even benign online shopping sites will lack buyer opinions shortly after the start, as there were not many customers yet. For that reason, this sign is not stand-alone and must be confirmed with other signs or indicators.

Definitely not generic comments generated by AI

However, once you face phishy-looking reviews that have no relation to what the site sells, that’s definitely not a good sign. Any indistinct or absurdity reviews that may describe any item sold on the website should be taken with a grain of salt. And well, on scam sites you will get an entire saltcellar. Always search for reviews on Google – this may save your money.

2. Unbelievably high discounts/low prices

No merchants will sell goods at loss for themselves. 70%, 80%, 90% markdowns are not feasible even during sales events such as the aforementioned Black Friday. In some cases, dishonest websites have the initial price low without saying anything about discounts, but they will most likely be outrageous, like $30 for a bed or $10 for a branded leather bag. Goods may be sold at a low price, but every sell-off has its sensible limits.

3. No customer support.

This is what distinguishes scam sites from the legit ones, even newly established. When a site is about to scam the buyers, there’s no need to waste time on answering their questions. Check out the “About us” or “Info” page – the page will have no support contacts whatsoever.

Typically for fraudulent sites, the “About us” column is completely empty

When they offer an email, or even a phone to contact them, there is a huge chance that these contacts will be dead silent to your request. This, or you will receive some generic text regardless of your question.

As scammers often reuse numbers and emails as “support” contacts, you can search them on Google. When they appear on a completely different website, be sure that this is a blatant scam.

A chain of scam sites that use the same “support email”

4. Payments via payment systems that does not support refunds

This scam indicator is complementary, as there are a lot of legit services and shops using direct bank transfers, CashApp, Venmo or payment systems like them. Each of the latter has the same pitfall I’ve already mentioned above: these methods do not suppose any refund options. And this is what attracts scammers – once you paid for the order, there’s no way to get the money back.

Some websites may also ask for payments in crypto, which feature even less control. While crypto payments expand their presence slowly, they still remain a beloved bay for different scammers.

5. Items’ images are sourced from another page

As fraudsters are unlikely to have any items, they are not able to shoot unique pictures. Thus their only option is to steal these images elsewhere. When scams sell the same goods on different sites, you can find same pics on similarly-looking fraudulent pages. By reverse image searching on Google, you can prove whether the image is unique or not.

Image duplicates on another scam site, as well as on Amazon and Walmart sites

6. Design repeats the one of a different page

Frauds do not stop on stealing photos. As rascals may use the same topic repeatedly, they use the same web design under the new address, and voila – a new scam site is ready to rock-n-roll! In some cases, image search advice from the previous paragraph may lead you to the identical copy of the page you’ve started on. It allows you to unveil such frauds pretty easy, but crooks who stand behind them never aim at cautious users.

Example of scam sites that duplicate each others’ design

Frequently Asked Questions about the Appehinglaus.com Scam